Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#221

Post by munificent »

pvarangot wrote: post #97
ghaff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot to like about many areas of California. Which ones may depend on your weather, cultural, etc. preferences. But Silicon Valley proper I find not particularly appealing; housing costs are only part of the reason. (SF itself has well-documented pluses and minuses.) I don't live or work in CA/SV. But if I were in SV but no longer needed to commute, I might well stay in CA but I'd probably move somewhere out…

I think SVs appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail. There's not many places in the US like this. Europe has a lot but there's not much tech jobs in them. You are also close to SF if you like the madness of the city every once in a while. Other suburby places with nature easily access…

> a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail.

Maybe I'm missing, but I don't see anything in that list that isn't true of almost every metro area in the US. I think people living in SF notice when new services come out that are only available there, like Uber was at first. But they don't notice when those services later spread to the rest of the country. You can get Amazon Prime shipping and rideshares everywhere now. Other cities may have somewhat less luxury retail, but likely have shorter drives with less traffic to get to nature.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#222

Post by chucky_z »

birdyrooster wrote: post #107
sandworm101 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> and still come out ahead financially. Ya. Earning a SF wage but living elsewhere is great. But there is a flip side to this coin. As employees realize they can work from home, employers also realize they can have employees work from home. They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages. Those who convert their in-office jobs into work-from-home are a covid oddity. Those who will be hired in the future on th…

We’ve been trying to hire these people for ages locally and remotely and we still couldn’t find them so I have no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19.

I agree with this. I cannot find talented and senior folks who fill the niche of my team (deep understanding of Linux systems, containers, and operating distributed systems). There seem to be a lot of SWEs in the world and very few SREs, let alone vanilla systems administrators for hire who are really good.

I think as an industry everyone is pushed towards software engineering and the large clouds have vacuumed up everyone worth their weight for operations. We make it happen but it’s so stressful because our team and workload balance is so far out of whack.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#223

Post by jeffreyrogers »

gonehome wrote: post #159
camjohnson26 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a ridiculous take. There’s a lot of technical talent trapped in the Bay Area and I welcome it in my region. Treating every resident as if they agree with the repressive SF politics is over generalizing. And who’s full? The main thing the flyover states need is more people.

The irony is it's the 'fuck off we're full' people that have made CA policy shitty. It's the NIMBY anti-change response to policy. The people that want a strong economy, incentivize building housing, and adapting lead to positive non-zero-sum outcomes. The people that say "fuck off we're full" block any policy and create perverse incentives that create a dysfunctional mess. This is ignoring the selection bias that th…

My experience living in an area that has high net migration from California is that the people leaving bring California's policies with them.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#224

Post by gopalv »

birdyrooster wrote: post #107
sandworm101 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> and still come out ahead financially. Ya. Earning a SF wage but living elsewhere is great. But there is a flip side to this coin. As employees realize they can work from home, employers also realize they can have employees work from home. They will soon realize they don't need to pay SF wages. Those who convert their in-office jobs into work-from-home are a covid oddity. Those who will be hired in the future on th…

We’ve been trying to hire these people for ages locally and remotely and we still couldn’t find them so I have no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19.

> no idea where you think all the talent was hiding until covid 19

The talent isn't being converted from potential - as was recently said, "You can't be what you can't see".

I was in Kansas City meeting people in Jan and it's pretty clear that there's a lot of talent hiding out there in downtown Missouri.

The talent there tops out at SSE because there's no vertical space without jumping to management & two years down the folks know are "mid-west-nice" managers with an iron fist behind it.

Several people who should've chased down the principal engineer roles have become these sorts of managers who never made it to directors because they're always been better devs than they were managers. And this seemed twice as bad for the young uns to have a dev-heavy manager squash a few of their attempts to actually own decisions, instead of just proposing them & see that role as a way to get that ability.

Most folks though things would be different if they had moved to SFBA, but all of them hit this point when they already had kids in school with stable single-income households (house all paid for).

In fact, I'd be one of those people in Bangalore if I had a bit more skills as a manager (completely sucking at management is a good way to be forced to chase the dev side).

If they could hired as a principal dev via remote out of being promising senior se, then this process would actually convert a lot of the talent into actual productivity in the industry.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#225

Post by xienze »

pvarangot wrote: post #97
ghaff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot to like about many areas of California. Which ones may depend on your weather, cultural, etc. preferences. But Silicon Valley proper I find not particularly appealing; housing costs are only part of the reason. (SF itself has well-documented pluses and minuses.) I don't live or work in CA/SV. But if I were in SV but no longer needed to commute, I might well stay in CA but I'd probably move somewhere out…

I think SVs appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail. There's not many places in the US like this. Europe has a lot but there's not much tech jobs in them. You are also close to SF if you like the madness of the city every once in a while. Other suburby places with nature easily access…

> I think SVs appeal is that you can leave in a quiet suburb close to a lot of easily accessible nature, while still having Amazon 2-day shipping, ridesharing, Uber Eats, and luxury retail.

Maybe there’s something you’re not explaining here but there’s plenty of places all over the country that fit this bill. Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Denver, etc.

And Amazon 2 day delivery is available all over the place...

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#227

Post by cam0 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #70

I'd love to hear from people who want to stay in the Bay area what is unique that you cannot find elsewhere in cheaper locales. I lived in Mountain View for 3 months during 500 startups and the valley proper was the most garden variety suburban existence you could find anywhere. I lived in SF proper off and on and can attest that it certainly has (had?) fantastic restaurants/shops and a particular type of culture tha…

I grew up in the Southeast and went to college there. I've since lived in Palo Alto and SF, and I'm staying in SF for the long haul. There aren't many things that are truly unique to any one city or region, but the reasons why I loved Palo Alto and currently love SF include: 1. the intelligent, interesting, generally well-mannered, and equally laid-back and hardworking people. 2. the weather (heat and humidity are hell to me) - I'm a runner and a cyclist and I love being able to do those things every day of the year in comfort. 3. beautiful nature in my backyard - Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, Mt. Tam, the Berkeley hills, Ocean Beach, day trips to Sonoma, weekend trips to Tahoe, weekend trips to Big Sur, proximity to Yosemite. 4. the walkability of my neighborhood (I live in a nice neighborhood with clean streets and rarely encounter any homelessness - I've still never actually seen a needle anywhere). My favorite sushi restaurant is one block away, 5 craft coffee shops within 3 blocks, Whole Foods within walking distance, multiple restaurants (all of these I have in mind are still open). 5. Biden/Harris flags and bumper stickers everywhere - maybe I enjoy an echo chamber but after spending considerable time in the Southeast, I love being in a solid blue city.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#228

Post by dilap »

rmk wrote: post #74

The major obstacle to living in SV is the insane cost of homeownership that puts the (pretty commonplace) aspiration of living in one's own home with a nice yard out of reach of all but the richest (even being in the top 5% of incomes in the nation is no guarantee of being able to own a house in Palo Alto, for example.) With the recent passing of Prop 19, things get even worse: people who are looking to inherit homes…

It's even worse in SF right now, where public schools are closed and private schools are open.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#229

Post by jonny_eh »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #70

I'd love to hear from people who want to stay in the Bay area what is unique that you cannot find elsewhere in cheaper locales. I lived in Mountain View for 3 months during 500 startups and the valley proper was the most garden variety suburban existence you could find anywhere. I lived in SF proper off and on and can attest that it certainly has (had?) fantastic restaurants/shops and a particular type of culture tha…

I have a wife and young child and plan to stay long term. Both my wife and I work in tech, and are not fans of remote work. So for both of us this is the best place career-wise. We own a modest house, with a nice yard, so no complaints there. We love the food, nature, weather, and theatre scene. We're in San Mateo, walking distance from downtown, which means we have access to some of the best ramen outside of Japan.

To be perfectly honest, the only thing missing is our friends and family in Canada. It wasn't so bad when we could visit 2-3 times a year, but the pandemic has put a stop to that.

Re: Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy

#230

Post by stryan »

TuringNYC wrote: post #86
gonehome wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've had some friends leave (to CO and DC), but I'm skeptical of companies and VCs leaving. For a kind of funny example, there was an episode of the all-in podcast (mostly a podcast of successful VCs) where they talked about SV politics and leaving. The irony was while they talked about CA politics to an absurd degree ("worst run state in US", etc.) when they asked each other if they were planning on leaving al…

>> Yeah, I've had some friends leave (to CO and DC), but I'm skeptical of companies and VCs leaving. >> I have had older friends leave to have a family. They went to Santa Cruz, Seattle, Denver, DC, and Austin. It's a shame. The ones that stayed either are very rich where a $5M house is not an issue, or they still live with three roommates and rent without kids. Just wait until they look for interesting jobs and get…

Your experience may be your own; I live just outside of DC as well (though on the MD side) and get bombarded with DC and MD job offers all the time. Perhaps not to the same extent as CA, but saying only 1 or 2 seems like a personal situation.
Post reply on HN